Saw blades come in a variety of shapes and forms. For example, saw blades can be of the circular type that have teeth that extend around the periphery of the circular saw blade. Saw blades can also be of the reciprocating type that are linear and have teeth along one peripheral edge of the linear blade. The teeth on the saw blades are sharp and can injure a person handling the blades if care is not exercised. Additionally, the sharp teeth on the saw blades can damage other objects or goods that inadvertently come in contact with the teeth. Furthermore, the teeth can have special tips, such as carbide tips, that can be damaged if the blade is mishandled or dropped. Therefore, saw blades are typically packaged with a protective cover that encloses the teeth and prevents accidental injury or damage to a person, other goods, or the teeth of a saw blade.
The typical prior art covers used on saw blades use flexible plastic tubing that has a single cut through the tubing wall along the length of the tubing, such as disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,057. The tubing is wrapped around the periphery of the saw blade with the teeth extending into an interior of the tubing through the cut along the length of the tubing. The tubing thereby encloses the teeth of the saw blade and provides a protective cover for the teeth of the saw blade. Because the tubing has a circular cross section while the saw blade is relatively flat, the tubing is not close fitting to the saw blade and is substantially thicker than the saw blade. The tubing thereby provides a protective cover that significantly adds to the overall thickness of the protected saw blade.
The increased overall thickness of the saw blade having the protective cover increases the space that each saw blade with the protective cover occupies. For example, the increased overall thickness substantially increases the height of a stack of saw blades having the protective cover over the height of a stack of the same number of saw blades without the protective cover. The increased thickness has a number of drawbacks. For example, the increased overall thickness requires a larger display area at a store to display a given number saw blades over those without the protective cover. Additionally, the saw blades are typically shipped in boxes of a fixed dimension. Because the saw blades with the protective covers have an overall thickness substantially larger than the saw blade itself, less saw blades with the protective cover can be fit within the fixed dimension box than the number of saw blades that can fit within the fixed dimension box that do not have the protective cover. The decreased number of saw blades with a protective cover that can fit in the fixed dimension box thereby increases the box waste per saw blade packaged in the box. That is, if the fixed dimension box can normally hold twenty saw blades that do not have the protective cover but can only hold five saw blades that have the protective cover, the box waste per blade is increased four fold and results in more packaging waste per blade shipped to a buyer. Furthermore, the decreased capacity of the fixed dimension box increases the packaging and shipping cost for a provider of saw blades with the protective cover.
Therefore, what is needed is a protective cover that protects the teeth of a saw blade but results in an overall thickness that is less than that achieved with the use of the prior art protective covers. By reducing the overall thickness of the saw blade with a protective cover, the stack height for a given number of saw blades can be reduced. The reduced stack height for a given number of saw blades allows for more saw blades having a protective cover to be placed in the fixed dimension box which thereby decreases the box waste per saw blade packaged in the fixed dimension box and decreases the overall cost of packaging and shipping per saw blade. Additionally, the reduction in the thickness of a saw blade having a protective cover decreases the amount of space required to display a given number of blades in a store.